Rain stole my weekend vacay

Now that I am essentially single, I can take these fun weekend trips, when DH has the kids, to see friends scattered throughout the country. A good friend from Tulsa moved to Houston last Fall, I have a best friend in L.A., another in Phoenix, a childhood friend in Denver, and I have family in the Richmond, VA area. It's more expensive, but I also have another grade school friend in Spain who wants to host a visit, as well as a high school friend in rural Australia who would be down for a week in Sydney if I could make a flight. So I have a lot of places to check off my list before I find dreamboat guy and get married and have kids again. (Bwahaha haha!) Because we all know how relationships and children can delay visits with friends.

I had planned a weekend in Houston for several months, and I was really looking forward to a great time, but the whole weekend was basically a bust.

It rained, hard, starting in the Friday traffic in Dallas through Saturday night in Houston. There was a break in the rain on Friday evening, so my friend and I did attempt to go out. Since it was only Friday night, we picked this night to stay local and she took me to a few different places in Clear Lake City, a good distance south of Houston, and where she resides.

First, we went to a quaint little italian restaurant and ended up being the last customers there because the taxi cab took forever to arrive. My friend, Lissy, doesn't drive when she is drinking at all, so we cabbed everywhere. Then we went to a bar/sports bar/pool hall type of dive where the crowd was either really young or just really beneath our standards. We had two drinks there, then tried another place next door and downstairs. This place has live bands and was charging $10 per person cover charge. I knew that would be a waste of money, so luckily, Lissy was able to convince the door man to let us in two for one. We were disappointed upon entering, however, to find that the band this night was not some hip and fun cover band, but a Kiss tribute band. NOT. what. we. were. in. for.

In an effort to glam up our night, we headed to the bar and each ordered a cosmo martini. Even though there were martini glasses collecting dust on a nearby shelf, the bartender explained that they no longer serve martini's in martini glasses because they break too often. He served our cosmos in collins glasses.

We walked away from the Kiss tribute band to the room next door playing dance music, but all of 8 people were even there. We stood and took it all in woefully for a few minutes and a couple of guys walked up and said, "you ladies having fun tonight?" They were very young, short, unfashionable and frankly, rather toothy and unappealing. I smiled politely and said we were trying to. One of the guys said, "I am looking to have fun, I just got back from Iraq!!" To this I replied, "I understand that, people trying to kill you and stuff and you come back home and you just want some nice girls to hang out with." Not us, clearly.

But there was no one else nearby. We did want to sit down and these guys lead us over to a table, unfortunately, closer to the band. Ahh. I don't normally smoke, but tonight was one of those nights. Lissy and I lit up our cigarettes and smoked and thought for a bit. The guys didn't speak much, because we wouldn't have heard them over the very loud band anyway. I didn't want to look like I was too disappointed to Lissy, so I just sat and followed her lead. If she was okay hanging out at this bar for a while, then I would bear it. Finally, she indicated that she wanted me to follow her to the bar, we didn't even say goodbye to the guys, and we made a beeline for the bar and tabbed out. Then left abruptly.

In the parking lot, we discussed where to go next...but I just said we could give up if she wanted to. Her favorite cabbie, fat Nicole, happened to have just dropped someone else off. We hailed her and hopped in. It was 12:45 AM. We headed back to Lissy's house and had a few more drinks and smokes on her back patio instead of trying to go out.

Saturday was heavy rain all day and into the evening. It was so much that the streets temporarily flooded. We took long afternoon naps, hoping to wake up to dry streets and more energy, but it just didn't happen. It was still rather wet at 10PM when we finally dragged ourselves out. We had decided not to venture into downtown, to my disappointment, because a cab fare would have been $52. So we headed out in search of something cool, but neither of us were feeling especially energetic, so we settled on the local Friday's and called it a night after that.

Sunday was beautiful, but all too late. Lissy drove me to the Kemah boardwalk and we had lunch at the aquarium. All the while, I was checking the clock because I had to be back in Dallas before 9 PM and not knowing what Houston traffic had in store for me, I couldn't relax. I did arrive home before 9, but that was the only good news all weekend. It was nice to be around Lissy and reminisce, but the weather was astoundingly energy zapping. I plan to go back in the summer and give this place another shot.

Now... thinking about a weekend in Denver this summer as well to visit another old girl friend.